Tuesday, October 10, 2017

It by Stephen King

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.

They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

My Thoughts:

This was my first Stephen King horror. I've tried others like "The Stand," "Firestarter," and "The Tommyknockers," but I couldn't get more than a hundred pages in any of them. I did read "The Green Mile" and really enjoyed it but it was also very short compared to King's other books.

I pushed through and I finished! Woot! It is cause for celebration. I didn't think I'd finish it back in July when I started it. But with the new movie and a read-a-long and all the Halloween horror reading I was planning on doing, I knew I needed to keep chipping away at it. Spoilers ahead....FYI

What I liked:

The world-building. King is obviously known for this. I've heard most of his books take place in the same world. He's fantastic with the seedy-side of Derry.

The Loser's Club kids. Only King can make a great coming-of-age novel inside a horror story.

It was creepy. The parts I loved best were when the kids were being haunted by It. I kept the lights on.

How the past and present start combing toward the end. We had a back and forth during the first part of the book and then the suspense picks up and we are taken quickly in and out of the past and present almost where you don't quite know which time we're in....

The new movie! Was awesome. It took the best parts of kids coming together and facing awful stuff and made it better than its source (in my opinion, which I know many will not agree).

I liked the old mini-series, especially the kid focused first part, but the adult half was awful and the special effects did not hold up.